Rafiel looked up at Tom, who'd propped himself up, with a foot on either of the intersecting metal railings. He looked doubtfully down at the railings, which he wasn't even sure should be able to support that weight, then up again at Tom, who was fiddling with the light cover, and doing something underneath. After a while, Tom trailed a wire down, and pulled it, so it followed, kind of behind one of the cement stalactites that dropped down from the ceiling and around the edge of the railing.
"How much wire do you have?" Rafiel said.
"Enough," Tom said. "Right. I'm going to jump down now."
"Not while I'm holding you," Rafiel said, and stepped back.
Tom's feet wobbled on the railing, he started tilting forward. Rafiel reached up. Grabbed his wrist. Pulled. Something at the back of his mind said it was better for them to fall on the platform than on the tank. They toppled to the floor. Rafiel hit his elbow and his head, and gathered himself up. "Are you all right?" he asked Tom who had fallen in a heap, and was pale and shivering.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah. Only . . ." He shook his head and scrambled to his knees and, on his knees, across the platform, to the planter, the box was tilted up against. Fishing in the box, he brought out the camera, which was about the diameter of a dime, and about as thick. He stuck it to one of the planters, well hidden in the foliage, the wire behind it. Then, as he seemed to make sure that the camera lens was unobstructed, he said, "When I was little, we had goldfish. At least, I wanted a pet, but you know, we lived in a condo. No place for pets, really, so my dad got me a bowl with goldfish. He also started calling them Schroedinger fish, because—well, I wasn't very interested and it wasn't in my room—it was in this passage between my room and the walk-in closet, and I didn't always remember to feed them. So Dad said every time we checked on them, it was not sure if they were alive or dead till we actually saw them. I remember this one time I forgot to feed them for like"—he narrowed his eyes with thought—"five days? When I came back to feed them, they all congregated in one spot, you know, clearly waiting for food.
"The sharks looked like that," he said and, for the first time, looked up to meet Rafiel's gaze. "Just like that. As if they were pet fish, used to being fed by people, you know?"
Rafiel sighed. "I'd say they are. I just wish we knew by whom."
"Well . . ." Tom said, and gestured towards the camera. "That will tell us, right?"
"Yeah," Rafiel said. "If they come in, of course. I mean, what with . . . you know . . ." He shrugged. "The room is sealed. Or will be again, once we leave. If it's a casual thing, if she just brings her boyfriends in, and someone . . . like the crab shifter, doesn't like it . . ."
"But if it's not," Tom said, "then we'll get it. The camera is motion-activated and it connects to my laptop, which is at the bed-and-breakfast. It will sound an alarm . . ." He gave an impish smile. "At least as soon as I install the program."
"Right," Rafiel said, but the idea didn't please him. There had to be another way around it, some other way to make things work. He didn't like the idea of just sitting down and waiting for some poor sap to be thrown in the shark tank. Not the least of which, because the poor sap would then be doomed. "So, why did you think you needed a surveillance system for The George?"
Tom stood up and dusted off the knees of his pants, as if this would fix the dust all over his clothes from having fallen headlong onto the observation platform. "I thought, you know, with the stuff that was happening at the back before . . . murder and all . . ." He shrugged. "I thought if a bunch of shifters were coming to the place, called by pheromones, we'd do as well to have early warning and proof if any of them had . . . control issues."
Rafiel, raising his eyebrows, reasoned that his friend trusted other shifters about as much as he did. They climbed down the stairs. Rafiel opened the door to the shark room, waited till Tom went by, then sealed the door again, initialing it once more, and putting in the date and time on the destroyed seal. "I'm going to hell." This time Tom didn't seem disposed to argue.
They walked quietly side by side along the deserted hallways, past the concrete trunk filled with plaster coins and Rafiel wondered if even very small children were fooled by it. He didn't remember ever being small enough to fall for that kind of fakery.
And then he wondered what they were going to do with the camera. While it had seemed like a good idea to set the camera in place, he now wondered how sane it was. Tom had been all enthusiastic about it, but it was probably just his happiness at getting to wire something. "Hey," he said, softly. "The other camera? Where do you intend to put it?"
Tom looked surprised. "Nowhere, really, I don't—"
He shut up abruptly, and Rafiel realized he had heard a sound, just before Tom stopped talking. Something like a soft footstep to their right. They were at the top of the stairs that led down to the aquarium with crabs and to the restaurant. For a second, he thought that it would be the crab shifter, emerging from his aquarium. Perhaps they could interrogate him.
But the person who came walking out of the shadows was Dante Dire—lank hair falling over his dark eyes, and his dark eyes sparkling with fury. "What are you doing here?" he asked.
Rafiel drew himself up and tried to hide the quiver of fear that ran through him on seeing the creature. Because he was not a fool, he remembered—all too well—that this creature could reach into his mind and change his thoughts; the idea paralyzed him. He could have endured any form or amount of physical torture, but the idea that someone—something—could change what he thought and how he felt . . . that he could not stand. "It would be better to ask what you are doing here," he said, keeping his voice steady. He was aware of Tom's having done something—he didn't know what. But Tom had been behind him as they walked, still in the shadows, Rafiel presumed, and now when Tom stepped forward there was nothing in his hands. He'd put the camera box down somewhere. And immediately Rafiel made himself stop thinking about the camera, and think only that they were there to gather evidence against the murderer who'd been throwing people into the shark tank. He put that thought in front, as it were, and hid all the rest—even his fear—behind it.
Dire's face hardened. "You have no business," he said, "trying to entrap innocent shifters."
"Innocent," Tom said, calling attention away from Rafiel—and presumably his thoughts. Rafiel felt as though something had been pressing against his thoughts, and the pressure now lifted, leaving him free to think clearly for a change. "Why do you think we're trying to entrap any shifters, innocent or otherwise?"
Dante Dire straightened up and stared, right over Rafiel's shoulder, at Tom. "Ah! You think I'm stupid and don't read the paper? I do. And the paper says there have been murders in this place. And then, and then, I see you here, skulking, looking for clues. His mind," he pointed at Rafiel, "makes it clear enough he's looking for clues against someone he thinks is a shifter." He crossed his arms on his chest. "It's you or me, pretty Kitten Boy. We're going to have this out now. The way I told it to the girl, I need to kill someone who can plausibly be accused of having killed the young shifters. You will do as well as any."
Rafiel felt as though his heart had skipped in his chest. He felt fear surging through his veins, demanding loudly that he shift. "I have to investigate," he said. "I have to. It's my job."
"Bah. A job paid for ephemerals. A job in which you obey ephemerals. A job"—he spat out the word as if it were poison—"where you demean your nature for money. Money is easy, Kitten Boy, when you live almost forever. As you'd already have figured out, if you were made of stronger stuff. But you're not, and now you'll die for it." He glared at Rafiel. "Are you going to shift, or do I kill you as you are?"
And not all the forces in the hell he claimed awaited him could have kept Rafiel from shifting.